So why is this guy a serious candidate for the GOP’s nomination? Because he is the only one running for the honor. He is in a solidly Democratic district and nobody else in the GOP thought it was worth the effort.

The party’s done its best to disassociate itself from Jones, but that he’s running at all has resulted in a thoroughgoing PR disaster. Right now, all over the world, there are snotty left-wing publications (like ours) writing snotty articles (like this one) and drawing comparisons with Donald Trump’s own Racism, and his idiotic characterization of the Charlottesville protestors as “very fine people” (just like I’m doing right now).

Probably unfair. I should be ashamed of myself.

Yet…curiously I’m not.

Because there is the inescapable reality that Trump did call white nationalists “very fine people,” and Trump did run a campaign based on xenophobia and hatred, and his current policy of arbitrary arrest and deportation of immigrants really does look like an exercise in ethnic cleansing.

So, maybe…

Maybe you have to ask if the GOP’s mainstream, which allowed Trump to become its candidate and supports him now that he is president, isn’t a bit complicit.

And maybe, just maybe, Mr. Jones came to rest in the GOP because he knew that, deep down…